Generally, for example, a manufacturer which manufactures sheet metal products receives a paper orthographic drawing of a product and is asked to provide an estimate by a purchaser.
The purchaser selects and decides a manufacturer which provides a proper price, a delivery date, quality or the like of the product, for example, based on the estimate.
Regarding the manufacturer asked for the estimate, a skilled person creates a solid view of the product in a mind from the paper ortho graphic drawing. Then, the skilled person develops the solid view to estimate and provide a machining time, a machining cost, machineability, a delivery date of the product, and the like.
Meanwhile, when a design is changed for reasons of the purchaser that has asked for manufacturing of the product, the manufacturer prepares an estimate again and also examines a delivery date of the product from the beginning.
This conventional method of preparing an estimate has problems as follows, for example.
Specifically, there is a problem that, in preparation of an estimate, it takes a long time to create a solid view of a product from an orthographic drawing in the mind and develop the solid view.
Moreover, since the solid view and a development are created in the mind, there is a problem that an error might occur and the estimate must be provided again.
Since a delivery date for manufacturing of the product is determined directly based on the orthographic drawing on paper, there is a problem that man-hours or the like of machining machines are not known and the delivery date can not be accurately calculated.
If a design is changed, for example, there is a problem that the delivery date may be considerably delayed.